ARBETSRAPPORTER
Kulturgeografiska institutionen
Nr. 687
___________________________________________________________________________
In the way of clean and safe drinking water
– exploring limitations to improvement of the water supply in Bagamoyo District, Tanzania.
Josefina Bemspång & Rebecka Segerström
Uppsala, mars 2009 ISSN 0283-622X
i
Abstract
Bagamoyo District, in the Pwani region in Tanzania, supplies a large part of Tanzania's biggest city, Dar es Salaam, with water. At the same time many people in rural villages in the district do not have access to clean and safe water. This thesis aims to explore what limitations there are to improvement of the rural water supply in Bagamoyo District. Specific attention is paid to the organizational structure of the water sector and how roles and responsibilities are divided, defined and communicated among the actors. A field study in the area was conducted to gather information on the water supply of today, the organization of the water sector and perceived limitations to improvement, from end users and actors working with water in the district. The field study included meeting actors on national, district and community level. A more in depth account of the present rural water supply situation was appraised with case studies performed in three villages in the district: Mtoni, Fukayosi and Kongo. The results have been grouped into three categories of limitation: 1) money, time & material resources; 2) knowledge & skills; 3) organization & leadership. Although most actors found the lack of financial capacity and availability of funds as well as knowledge and skills to be a great limitation to the improvement of the water supply, the most important conclusion this study draws concerns limitations in the organizational structure of the water sector. Due to a recent decentralization reform, more responsibility has been given to local government and community, but without enough capacity building measures these actors have had difficulties realizing their new roles. In addition, when external actors do not seem to have adapted to the decentralized structure of the reformed water sector, there is confusion as to who ought to be leading the way in the development of the rural water supply.
Authors: Josefina Bernspång and Rebecka Segerström Year: 2008
Advisor: Clas Lindberg
Supervisor during field study: Dr. Omar Y. Juma
Title: In the way of clean and safe drinking water – exploring limitations to improvement of
the water supply in Bagamoyo District, Tanzania
Level: C
Abstract
Sehemu kubwa ya maji kwa Dar es Salaam, mji mkuu wa Tanzania, yanatoka wilaya ya Bagamoyo katika Mkoa wa Pwani. Hapo hapo watu wengi wanaokaa kijijini wilayani hawana maji safi. Ripoti hii inahusu uwezekano wa kuleta maji safi ya bomba kijijini katika wilaya ya Bagamoyo. Hasa mambo ya kupanga uongozi kiwilaya kwa mambo ya maji na jinsi wajibu na mamlaka yamegawanyika, yameenezwa na yameeleweka kwa wanaohusika. Utafiti umefanyika ili kukusanya habari jinsi maji yanavyoletwa sasa, jinsi kazi hii imepangwa na shida ambazo zinatazamiwa kwa wakaaji na wahudumia. Katika uchunguzi huu watu wa serikali kitaifa, kiwilaya na kijijini wamehudhuria. Kama hatua ya pili mambo ya vijiji vitatu vya Mtoni, Fukayosi na Kongo yameangaliwa zaidi. Shida zinazoonekana zimegawanyika katika sehemu tatu: 1) fedha, wakati na vifaa; 2) uwezo na 3) mipango na uongozi. Karibu wote wameona ya kwamba fedha hazitoshi na pia uwezo wa wafanyakazi hautoshi ili wakaaji wa kijijini wapate maji safi ya bomba lakini ripoti hii inaona jambo kubwa ni shida ya mipango na uongozi kwa sehemu ya maji kijijini. Hapo karibuni siasa imebadilika na mamlaka imehamishwa karibu zaidi na wakaaji bila kuwaelimisha ya kutosha wanaohusika sasa wanashindwa kuona wanatakiwa kufanya nini. Pia kwa kuwa kuna makampuni za binafsi ambazo hazijaelewa mabadiliko haya kuna wasiwasi ni nani anayeongoza na kutawala katika mambo yanayohusu kupatikana kwa maji kijijini.
Waandishi: Josefina Bernspång and Rebecka Segerström Mwaka: 2008
Kiongozi: Clas Lindberg
Kiongozi wilayani: Dr. Omar Y. Juma
Jina la ripoti: In the way of clean and safe drinking water - exploring limitations to
improvement of the water supply in Bagamoyo District, Tanzania
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Acknowledgements
This essay would not have been possible without the help and generosity of a number of people.
Our local supervisor, Dr. Omar Y. Juma, helped us with everything from good advice on methodology to practical arrangements throughout our field study and we owe him many thanks. We would also like to show our gratitude to everyone working at Ifakara Health Institute in Bagamoyo for their hospitality, and especially to Alex, for all his help.
We cannot thank Ulla-Maj Jern enough for welcoming us to Tanzania and all the support throughout both the rough and the pleasant times during our field work. We also want to thank Lena Oscarsson for her help and support on many practical matters.
Without the excellent work of our interpreter John Chacha Marwa, this thesis would not be what it is. Special thanks goes to Jabir in Mtoni, George in Fukayosi and Cleng’a in Kongo for the help they provided in arranging interviews and workshops in their respective villages.
All our informants deserve a huge thank you, for all their cooperation and the tremendous hospitality that we experienced during our study. Special thanks to Clement Lyoto at Bagamoyo District Water Office for all the information he provided us with.
We are thankful to Ndelle Mbwette and his fellow consultants for taking us with them to Dodoma, which was a valuable experience for us, both for the field study and for us personally as future engineers. Thanks to Mr Gabriel, giving us information about Bagamoyo District rapidly when we needed it.
Many thanks to the department of Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala University and to Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency), for providing us with the minor field study scholarship that made our field study in Tanzania possible.
We have had a lot of help from our academic supervisor, Clas Lindberg, and for this we are very thankful. He has helped us both with practical and theoretical issues. Thanks also to Wilhelm Östberg for good advice and to everyone that has helped us proof-read this thesis. Our final word of acknowledgement goes to Emil and Tobias, for their love and support throughout the work on this thesis.
Matangazo
Ripoti hii tusingaliweza kuiandika bila misaada wa watu wengi. Kiongozi na msaidizi wetu wilayani Dr Omar Y. Juma ametusaidia na mambo mbalimbali kama kutushauri kuhusu jinsi ya kufanya na mambo mengi ya kijijini, tunatoa shukrani zetu hasa. Pia tunataka kuwashkuru wafanyakazi wote wa Ifakara Health Institute, Bagamoyo kwa ukarimu wao, na hasa Alex kwa msaada wote.
Hatuwezi kumshukuru ya kutosha Ulla-Maj Jern kwa jinsi alivyotukaribisha Tanzania na kutusaidia katika wakati mzuri na mgumu. Pia tunamshukuru Lena Oscarsson kwa msaada wake katika mambo mengi.
Bila msaada mzuri wa mkalimani wetu John Chacha Marwa, ripoti hii isingaliweza kuwa kama ilivyo. Pia tunawashukuru Jabir wa Mtoni, George wa Fukayosi na Cleng'a wa Kongo kwa misaada wao katika kupanga watu wa kuonana nao na kuandaa mikutano na wanakijiji.
Wote waliotusaidia na habari tunawahsukuru kwa kusaidiana nasi na ukarimu tuliopewa. Hapa tunataka kumtaja Clement Lyoto wa Bagamoyo District Water Office kwa habari zote alizotusaidia kupata.
Tunawashukuru Ndelle Mbette na wenzake kwa kuturuhusu kuja nao Dodoma. Imekuwa misaada katika mradi wetu na pia kwa siku za mbele tutakapokuwa tumemaliza masomo na kuanza kufanya kazi. Pia tunamshukuru Nd. Gabriel, ambaye kwa haraka ametusaidia habari za Vilaya ya Bagamoyo kila tulipohitaji.
Shukrani nyingi kwa Social and Economic Geography, Chuo Kikuu Uppsala na kwa Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) ambao wametoa msaada wa elimu (scholarship) iliyotuwezesha kwenda Tanzania.
Tumepata msaada mbalimbali ya kikazi na kinadharia kwa kiongozi wetu Clas Lindberg. Asante sana. Pia tunamshukuru Wilhelm Östberg kwa kutushauri vizuri na kwa wote waliotusaidia kusahihisha ripoti hii. Neno la mwisho ni kwa Emil na Tobias kwa kuwa nasi katika mradi huu wote.
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Table of contents
1. INTRODUCTION ... 1 1.1 STUDY OBJECTIVE... 2 1.2 DELIMITATIONS... 2 1.3 METHODOLOGY... 31.3.1 Practical issues with the chosen methodology ... 5
2. THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK ... 8
2.1 PREVIOUS RESEARCH ON DEVELOPMENT WORK AND WATER SUPPLY... 8
2.2 WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM VS. WATER SUPPLY – DEFINITION OF TERMS... 11
3. WATER SUPPLY IN BAGAMOYO... 13
3.1 ACTORS, POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY – ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE... 13
3.1.1 Public Sector... 13
3.1.2 Private sector and international donors... 16
3.1.3 Examples of project engagement ... 18
3.2 THE STUDY AREA AND ITS WATER SUPPLY... 18
3.2.1 Introduction to the study area – Bagamoyo District... 18
3.2.2 The physical water supply systems ... 19
3.2.3 The case study villages ... 21
4. LIMITATIONS TO WATER SUPPLY IMPROVEMENT... 27
4.1 MONEY, TIME & MATERIAL RESOURCES... 27
4.2 KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS... 28
4.3 ORGANIZATION & LEADERSHIP... 30
4.4 SUMMARY OF THE LIMITATIONS TO DEVELOPMENT... 33
5. DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES IN A DECENTRALIZED WATER SECTOR ... 35
5.1 CONCLUDING DISCUSSION... 35
5.2 FURTHER RESEARCH... 37
6. REFERENCES ... 38
APPENDIX 1 – TABLE OF INFORMANTS ... 40
APPENDIX 2 – THEMES DISCUSSED IN INTERVIEWS... 41
1. Introduction
Access to clean and safe drinking water is stipulated in the Tanzania National Water Policy (2002) as a basic human need and right. Water is, however, unevenly distributed in time and space, and quantity and quality vary greatly. Many people in rural Tanzania have to fetch water that is often not drinkable without treatment, from sources far away from their homes. Despite investments in the water sector since the 1970’s, water scarcity is a prevailing problem in many places.1 Close to 4000 children die in the world every day due to insufficient water supply and sanitation.2 Water borne diseases, such as hepatitis and cholera, are among the biggest threats to people living with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania and as the number of infected rise, the issue of clean and safe water becomes even more essential.3 Improved water supply services can reduce water borne diseases and improve health.
In addition to this, water availability is one of the major constraints on economic development, particularly for developing countries like Tanzania.4 If people, especially women, did not have to spend hours every day on water fetching, they could use their time and energy in other, possibly income-generating areas. In this sense, having a functioning, satisfactory water supply can enable societies to develop economically. Therefore it ought to be in everyone's interest to improve the water supply. Still, in many cases the water supply leaves a lot to wish for and the means to improve the situation are not always available.
Bagamoyo District is located in the Tanzanian coastal region, where the main water sources are the two big permanent rivers Wami and Ruvu. In addition, small lakes and access to salt water from the Indian Ocean makes Bagamoyo a fortunate district when it comes to water resources. Water from the district must be considered to be very reliable since it is distributed outside the district and supplies the biggest city in the country, Dar es Salaam, with the majority of its tap water.5 At the same time many rural villages in the district do not have access to clean and safe drinking water and there are still many people suffering from water scarcity. Today, improved water supply reaches 68% of the rural population, referring to the National Water Policy standard of having water within 400 meters accessible within half an hour.6 Exploring reasons for the existing inadequate level of water supply services would be a historical study, but accepting the current situation: How about outlooks for the future? What about possibilities for change?
1 United Republic of Tanzania, July 2002: National Water Policy, p. 4, 31 & 34. 2 United Nations, Swedish webbsite, www.fn.se, 6/12 2008.
3 Interview: Project Manager, UKUN, 7/11.
4 Madulu, N. and Zaba, B, 1998: Water availability and rural migration in Mwanza region, Tanzania. Tanzanian
Journal of Population Studies and Development, 5(1&2), p. 24.
5 Interview: Dawasco Area Manager Bagamoyo, Dawasco, 25/9. 6
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1.1 Study Objective
This thesis aims to explore what limitations there are to improvement of the rural water supply in Bagamoyo District. The intention is not to identify all limiting factors; instead our essay focuses on the opinions of the involved actors, including end-users, on what prevents improvement of the situation. Specific attention is paid to the organizational structure of the water sector, and how roles and responsibilities are divided, defined and communicated among the actors. To fulfil our objective we use these guiding questions:
What actors are working with water supply in Bagamoyo district?
What water supply systems are there in Bagamoyo District today and what future plans are in place?
What are the limitations to improvement of the water supply in Bagamoyo District? The study consists of two parts. The first part is an overall appraisal of the water supply systems in Bagamoyo District, gathered from talking to actors working with water in the district and on the national level. The second part of the study is a collection of views on what is limiting improvement of the water supply. These have been collected from actors on national, district and local levels in the water sector that work in the study area and also from end users. A more in depth account of the present rural water supply originates from case studies performed in three villages in the district. Due to practical reasons, the villages we chose to study all lie in the same part of the district, not more than 40 km from Bagamoyo town. To try to capture the variety in water supply systems in the district, communities with different water supplies were chosen for the case studies.
1.2 Delimitations
In this essay we start from the standpoint that the water supply in the area is in need of improvement and that there are limitations to such improvement. This is not to say that there are no places where the water supply is satisfactory, nor that improvement is always limited. Looking at the issue of insufficient water supply and trying to explain why the situation is not improving is, however, more relevant both for people engaged in development work in Sweden and for institutions in Tanzania trying to meet the development goals in the water sector. Health and sanitation is closely linked to water supply quality, but it will not be dealt with specifically although it appears in the empirical material. The same goes for management of water resources. Although problems with water supply and water resources are often integrated, it will not be the focus of this essay. This thesis deals only with the domestic water supply systems – including the water source, distribution and treatment, up to end use.
1.3 Methodology
This essay is the result of a field study in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, conducted during a nine week period; September to November, 2008. The field study was sponsored by the Minor Field Study programme of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
During our field study, we collected material from representatives for all major stakeholders involved in the water supply sector in Bagamoyo. This included interviews with 20 different actors (see appendix 1), three workshops with end users and informative walks around the case study villages together with villagers. Nine of the informants represent the local level, six the district level and five represent the national level. Since we were unfamiliar with the study area and unacquainted with the water sector in Bagamoyo we chose to use a “snow ball”-method to identify the actors and find our informants. We started with visiting the obvious actors in the water supply sector, such as the District Water Office, the District Health Office and the water supply company in the area. From interviews with these actors we were able to further identify relevant informants. We started out at district level due to the fact that the district is the geographical area that our study concerns. From this level we expanded the study, down to the local level and up to the national level. Our main location during the study was Bagamoyo town, and from there we made day trips to our case study villages and to Dar es Salaam where most actors on national level were interviewed.
All interviewees were asked questions on the same themes (see appendix 2) but the questions concerned different geographical levels depending on which level the interviewee represented. Actors on district level were asked about the situation in the district and to some extent in the three case study villages while actors on local level answered questions about the specific situation in their villages. Informants on national level were asked about the situation in Bagamoyo District and in Tanzania as a whole. The difference in how we asked our questions – depending on whom we interviewed – and the different perspectives of our informants reflects into our results. However, we preferred to keep the consistency in our field-methodology and this included letting the informants formulate the perceived limitations to improving the water supply from their perspective and in their own way. This was achieved by having semi-structured interviews and since our knowledge of the study area was limited prior to the study this type of interview was flexible enough to capture important issues that we had not foreseen.7
We conducted two rounds of interviews on district level. In the first round, information regarding the characteristics of the existing water supply in the area and physical plans on improving the water supply was gathered. The aim for this was to collect background information and to enable us to identify villages suitable for case studies. In the second round, when we had gained more knowledge about the present situation, we focused on questions more directly concerning limitations to improvement. This gave us opportunities to follow up on information from our first visits. As we became more informed we could also discuss the
7 More details on benefits and characteristics of semi-structured interviews are found in Bryman, A., 2002: Samhällsvetenskapliga metoder. Malmö: Liber ekonomi, p. 301.
4 water supply situation with the informants, which made our interviews more fruitful. On national level we interviewed representatives from the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, the Ministry of Health, the University of Dar es Salaam and two private sector consultants working with water supply in Tanzania. Here we compressed the two interview rounds into one. Both on district and national level we collected information through semi-structured interviews that were conducted in English.
For the case studies we made three visits to each of the villages of Mtoni, Kongo and Fukayosi. The first visit to each village was mainly to establish a contact within the village to enable arrangements for further interviews and workshops and gather basic information on the existing water supply. This was made through informal talks and observations. The subsequent interviews with the village chairperson, village leaders and the village water committee were semi-structured interviews or semi-structured group interviews, conducted in Swahili with an interpreter. As a compliment to the information given during the interviews, we made informative walks around each village to learn more about the water supply systems available. We ended the case studies with workshops involving groups of villagers. Village leaders helped us find workshop participants, based on our request for 20 participants of whom at least half should be women. The participants were divided into groups of four or five with separate groups for men and women to ensure that the women participated. Our interpreter read out the questions aloud and after that the groups were asked to discuss and answer the questions on the distributed questionnaires, which were written in Swahili. Initially we considered participatory methods, such as making lists and drawing schematic maps over problems with water supply, for the workshops. However, after having discussed this with our local supervisor, a researcher with experience in conducting workshops in the area, we decided to use questionnaires. Arguments for this were that many of the participants would consider our study to be more serious with questionnaires, as well as being more time effective. By conducting this at the end of the field work and by us being present and available during the sessions we hopefully reduced the common risk of misinterpreting the questions and answers with a questionnaire.
Throughout the field work that constitutes the foundation of this thesis we have been inspired by the ideas of Robert Chambers.8 With a humble and perceptive approach towards our informants, especially on local level, we have tried to utilize their knowledge and their capability to analyse their water supply situation. We have been particularly aware of the inequality that often exists between researcher and informants during research in developing countries. Chambers use the term “uppers” to describe people from developed countries in the north or the west, well educated and rich who come to poorer countries to do research or engage in development projects, while “lowers” are the people in the developing world that receive the help or are affected by the research.9 These roles can affect the sustainability of a project or the results from research. To some extent the terms translate to us and our informants during our field study, although the fact that we are women and still undergraduate students lessened our position as “uppers”. Nevertheless, Chambers’ thinking made us aware
8 - presented in his book Whose Reality Counts? – Putting the First Last (1997). 9
of dominance behaviour and made us avoid small details such as wearing dark sunglasses when meeting people, but also made us put more emphasis on explaining that it is their view we are interested in. In many cases the fact that we are Swedish might have had an affect on our interviews, since Sweden through Sida has given development aid to Tanzania for many years – a fact that was well known to most of the people we met. When analyzing our material from the field study we have been aware that the answers given might have been coloured by our role as both “uppers” and Swedish, especially when discussing economical limitations to development. Despite this, we have chosen to put our priorities on presenting the answers of our informants in an undiluted manner, and discuss their relevance in the text rather than to cut things out. It is worth mentioning, also, that our preconceptions in many cases were proven wrong and we found that we in most cases received very honest and straight forward answers throughout our interviews.
The results gathered during our field study have been used in two ways. Firstly, material describing the present water supply has been compiled into an empirical background. This includes a description of the water supply systems that are in place today, physical plans on improvement that exist and how the water sector is built up. Secondly, the part of our material consisting of actors’ views on what is limiting improvement of the water supply has then been categorized into three themes. These are 1) money, time & material resources; 2) knowledge & skills; 3) organization & leadership. The terms have been borrowed from research on how water supply affects rural development by Drangert (1972). In his study these terms are used as variables to appraise how likely a new technical solution is to be adopted by the local community.10 To fit our study we have chosen to change the original term affordability, time
& material resources to money, time & material resources as we converted the variables into
themes of limitations. This was done to better reflect the different views on economical limitations that are analysed within this theme. The different views collected during our interviews have after categorization been integrated and analysed, based on previous research on development work and water supply.
1.3.1 Practical issues with the chosen methodology
An issue with our method that needs some discussion is the experienced language barrier. In the cases where we used an interpreter this was particularly evident, but interviews held in English were in some cases also problematic. It took some time to adapt to a dialect and a vocabulary that we had not experienced before. This became apparent in the cases where we made more than one interview. We almost always experienced our return visits as the most rewarding and to some extent we believe that this had to do with our adaptation to the way people spoke. The way we spoke may also have affected our informants in how they interpreted our questions, although we believe that the semi-structured form of our interviews reduced the effect this had on our results. Nevertheless, it is possible that some of the information we received has been lost or misinterpreted due to the fact that neither we nor our
10 Drangert, J., 1972: Who cares about water? Household Water Development in Sukumaland, Tanzania. Linköping:
6 informants were using their mother tongue.
Despite the many benefits of recording, especially with the above mentioned language barrier, we did not record our interviews. We made this choice after discussing it with our Swedish supervisor and after having heard of instances where the recording equipment disturbed the informant. For one, the knowledge that every word is recorded could affect the informants’ willingness to respond.11 Additionally, in our situation there was also the risk that the recording equipment itself could attract a disproportionate amount of attention. It is possible that we might have lost some information due to this, but because of the fact that there were two of us present at each interview, and because we wrote out our notes directly after each interview we believe the loss has been minor.
As we do not understand more than very little Swahili we had to conduct the interviews with an interpreter who naturally works as a “filter” between us and the interviewed person. This can be both an advantage and a problem. An interpreter that shares the culture of the interviewee can have the cultural awareness enabling him to formulate the questions maximally acceptable to the other party and in that way make it easier for this person to answer. The problem lies in retaining the meaning of the questions.12 However, by having had a continuous dialogue with our interpreter concerning the interviews, the interpretations and the purpose of the study, we do not consider this problem to be a big issue in our study. Working with an interpreter was also favourably sine he could help explain the atmosphere during the interviews and some cultural aspects we had difficulties to understand. Our interpreter also gave much appreciated help when it came to organizing the groups in our workshops and to make people understand what we wanted them to do.
We have mainly been using the same interpreter for all interviews and workshops on local level but for practical reasons we used other interpreters on two different occasions. This could be seen as a problem since the different interpreters might have interpreted our questions differently which could result in inconsistencies in our method. On some of the questions from these interviews it is also uncertain who is responding, the informant or the interpreter. To reduce these problems we had additional talks with these informants with our regular interpreter and we considered the information from the previous interviews more as results of informal talks where our temporary interpreters were participating. Because of the language barrier and the potential problems it might have caused, it is important to point out that the results presented are our interpretations of the answers of our informants.
Since all our interviews were conducted in the environment of the informants and since we in many cases were dependent on their good will to let us interview them, our control over the interview situation was limited. This is especially the case for the interviews on local level. For one, limited means of communication made some of the interviews difficult to schedule. This resulted in that we sometimes had to wait for our informants or make shorter interviews than planned, but in general the people we met were very generous with their time and very helpful in arranging interviews right away. Another thing that was difficult for us to
11Bryman, p. 310-311.
12 Jentsch, B., 1998: The ‘Interpreter Effect’: Rendering Interpreters Visible in Cross-Cultural Research and
control was the number of people turning up for the appointed interviews. In some of the group interviews we found ourselves with a larger number of informants (up to 15 informants) than we had expected. These interviews tended to be less fruitful than interviews with fewer informants. Our experience has been that even though there were many participants, only a few of them would speak leaving the rest as observers, which might have affected the answers of those who did speak. This could be especially problematic when the observers included the village chairperson or other village leaders. However, we do not consider this to be a big problem in this study – critique of the village leadership was discussed openly in a meeting with the leaders present and this was not an atypical behaviour in Tanzania according to our interpreter.
The fact that the responsibility for fetching water in most cases lies on the women and children of the households while there are mostly men on decision-making positions made it relevant to take gender into consideration in our study. This was also pointed out during some of our interviews.13 As both the village chairperson and leaders in most cases were men we found it very important that the workshops included women. In all three workshops there were at least two groups made up of female participants.
13
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2. Theoretical and conceptual framework
Since this essay primarily is the result of an empirical study we have no ambition to prove or discard theories. The aim with this chapter is rather to put our study in a wider context and to provide guidelines for our analysis. This chapter is therefore made up of a review of previous development research and a section where we define how we use two, in this thesis, central terms: water supply and water supply system.
2.1 Previous research on development work and water supply
We have used previous research to explore connections between different methods and theories for enabling water supply development. The following résumé is in some ways a historical review where, for our study, a relevant selection of the different models used for development work is included.
Public goods and infrastructure development – top-down thinking
According to Kjell Havnevik, author of Tanzania – the Limits to Development from Above (1993), Tanzania has historically been developed from above. Development has been implemented by colonial and post-colonial states and pushed by external donor agencies. This top down development has resulted in a state-dominated, externally dependent and undemocratic society.14
In their contribution to Making it flow – learning from commonwealth experience in
water and electricity provision (2004) Tim Kessler and Nancy Alexander state that the water
service sector is considered to be public goods. Market prices alone cannot capture the public value and benefits of this service. Due to this, public goods have traditionally been provided by governments.15 They also argue that water services have a special economic logic in comparison with other public goods. In its role of a basic infrastructure service, water supply is typically structured as a natural monopoly (for example, in most settings there can only be one centralized water supply system). This economic logic is also affected by the tremendous investments that are required for installation, upgrading or expansion of basic infrastructure in comparison with, for example, education or healthcare. Such major investments will require a long payback period regardless of the source of capital. Historically, governments have been the dominant providers of water because of its public benefits, its character as a natural monopoly and the economics of scale.16
A traditional view on how development of basic infrastructure is initiated can be found in Jan-Olof Drangert's book Who cares about water? Household Water Development in
Sukumaland, Tanzania (1972): “The dynamic mechanism or ‘prime mechanism’ behind any
14 Havnevik, K., 1993: Tanzania, the limits to development from above. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African
Studies in cooperation with Mkuki na Nyota Publications, p.17.
15 Kessler, T. and Alexander, N., 2004: Financing and Provision of Basic Infrastructure – Synthesis, Commentary and Policy Implications of Water and Electricity Service Case Studies. Making it Flow: Learning from Commonwealth
Experiences in Water and Electricity Provision, Commonwealth Foundation, p.1.
16
change is envisaged as some kind of external intervention to which people are impelled to respond”17 and “[t]here is little evidence of organised efforts to provide a major new improvement by any means other than government action and supervised from the outside.”18
Social aspects of water supply
In another section Kessler and Alexander discusses how development of the water supply system is not a purely technical issue of hardware and finance. Often lost in these complex discussions are the people who are supposed to benefit from improved infrastructure. Unfortunately, the supply of water does not translate automatically into proper use and designers tend to neglect the socialisation involved in making these services accessible to poor people. Creating modern consumers requires significant awareness building at household and community level.19 In writing about water supply in rural Kenya, Pekka Seppälä (1986) touches on the same issue when talking about participatory interventionist strategy, where the people are involved in the development process. In his words, “there is a need for government to bring about effective decentralization in order to facilitate local decision-making, to introduce effective coordination at the local level and to establish local level planning mechanisms”20. This need for decentralization and the new call for local level participation will be dealt with in the following sections.
Towards decentralization
Today there is a trend of sector reforms in many countries, including decentralization policies, to meet the needs of the people who are still without a reliable water supply service. These reforms are undertaken to overcome severe limitations of centralized planning and management of water supply facilities that result in a lack of necessary support services. According to Catarina Fonseca and Eveline Bolt (2002) it is expected that the adoption of decentralization policies in developing countries will contribute to reducing over-concentration of power, authority and resources at the level of central government. This will allow closer contact between local government and communities and a better representation of various political, religious, ethnic and tribal groups in the decision-making process.21
There are major implications however within the process of decentralization from national to local governments and other support agencies at all levels including the community. This is due to the change in responsibilities and tasks to be performed at different levels. Fonseca and Bolt claim that “A major consequence of decentralization is that it increases the financial, operational, technical and managerial responsibilities at local level, which local governments and communities sometimes do not have the capacity to meet”.22 To be able to meet these changes, strong capacity building measures are needed.Decentralization
17 Drangert, p.25. 18 Ibid. p 28.
19 Kessler and Alexander, p. 12-13.
20 Seppälä, P., 1986: Water supply as a medium of rural development in Kenya. Institute of Development Studies,
University of Helsinki, B, 12, p. 9-10.
21 Fonseca, C. and Bolt, E., 2002: How to Support Community Management of Water Supplies. IRC Technical Paper
Series 37, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, Meppel: Giethoorn Ten Brink, p. 23-24.
22
1 0 processes do not automatically improve the water supply because of an institutional complexity: “Where there are several agencies with different but sometimes overlapping responsibilities and decision-making powers and at the same time there is a lack of clarity or co-ordination of activities, it may be difficult to improve the situation”.23
Participatory approach, bottom up development
There is a trend in many countries to encourage rural community participation. This is in line with decentralization of government policies to give local government more responsibilities and aim at greater efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of public services.24
Participatory approaches focuses on the participation of the beneficiaries throughout a development process, where involvement in planning, implementation and evaluation is seen to be essential for a project to be successful and lead to sustainable solutions. In his book
Whose Reality Counts – putting the first last (1997), Robert Chambers argues that facilitating
participation in development work, with approaches which are bottom up instead of top-down, is one of the keys to achieve well-being and sustainability through development work.25
Community-driven development
Since the mid 1990s community-driven development (CDD) has become one of the most popular participatory approaches to development. Many development partners, in particular the World Bank, have assisted a number of countries in preparing and implementing CDD projects.26 Described by Kessler and Alexander, CDD arrangements make community groups and non-governmental organizations engage in service provision. Through decentralization, CDD rise as communities start to look for solutions to their infrastructure shortage. According to the World Bank, the principles of CDD are:
- The focus is on what users want, are willing to pay and can sustain
- The local community initiates, plans, implements, maintains and owns the system (increasing its sense of responsibility)
- Water is treated as an economic good
- Local water committees, in which women play a key role, are strong (but need training)
- Full cost recovery is expected on operation and maintenance and replacement.27
Unfortunately the local government, empowered in the decentralization, can seldom regulate or manage the local CDD projects, which accounts for a low rate of sustainability among them.28
23 Fonseca and Bolt, p. 25. 24 Ibid. p. 23.
25 Chambers, p. 11.
26 Asian Development Bank webbsite, www.adb.org, 15/12 2008.
27 World Bank OED, Winter 2002: Rural Water Projects: Lessons Learned. Precis No. 215, p. 37. 28
Social entities
A somewhat different perspective on water supply development comes from Seppälä who talks about social entities as carriers of water supply techniques. These entities are in his definition the state, community and household and any of these entities can create options for water supply development. These options are competitive, in the sense that the feasibility of one choice of water supply development depends on the existing alternatives from the other entities. Also the social entities and the options they provide are not seen as purely technical. They have a multi-purpose character, with multiple ties to their environment. Development choice can therefore be based on circumstances beyond the proposed water supply option.29
2.2 Water supply system vs. Water supply – Definition of terms
The terms water supply and water supply system will be used in this essay referring to slightly different things. The meanings of these terms therefore need to be clarified.
Water supply, in this essay, refers to the water that is available to a user and the water that
the user is provided with. This can be poor or good, but every person has some kind of water supply even though it sometimes can be unhealthy and unfit for domestic use. This comes from the fact that everybody needs water to survive. Even if there is no “satisfactory” water supply, people cannot go for more than a few days without water, hence some kind of water supply is inevitably created in a community.
A water supply system consists of all the mechanisms that provide the water supply. This can be a large-scale piped water system with a treatment plant and a distribution network where the water is pumped to domestic taps, public water points and commercial users. It can also be a shallow well covered with a hand-pump, and the labour of the water fetcher pumping up the water and carrying it home. It is not solely made up of technical or mechanical components, since for example the division of responsibilities on different actors is included.
To clarify the difference and the relation between the water supply system and the water supply we provide some examples:
- A poor water supply system does not manage to provide water supply properly, however poor quality of the system does not necessarily result in poor water quality. The water can be clean and safe, but for instance big leakage problems can result in lack of quantity, or just revenue loss for the water distributing entity. However, if the water supply system is lacking in treatment facilities or monitoring, the quality of the water could of course be bad due to this.
- A reliable water supply is available through a properly working water supply system. Unreliable water supply is then the outcome of an ill-working system.
- The output of a water supply system is the supplied water.
- Water supply improvements are achieved through improvements of the water supply system or by changing the source of water – which means creating a new water supply system.
29
1 2 This last example leads us to conclude that although this essay aims to explore what limitations there are to the water supply in Bagamoyo district, it inevitably also investigates limitations to improving the water supply systems in Bagamoyo District.
1 1
3. Water Supply in Bagamoyo
We have now come to the first empirical chapter of our essay where we present Bagamoyo District and the case study villages, the existing water supply systems and the water sector actors in the area. This will lay the foundation for the coming chapter concerning limitations to improvements. Before describing the physical water supply in the district we will present the actors that we have found to be relevant in the water sector in Bagamoyo.
3.1 Actors, power and responsibility – organizational structure
The description below is primarily based on information gathered from our interviews. This is sometimes combined with what is written about the actors in previous studies and in the Tanzania National Water Policy from 2002. The organizational structure of the water sector is illustrated in figure 1.
3.1.1 Public Sector
The government of Tanzania is currently embarking on the process of decentralization and privatization of the economy. With this, the government's role is changing from provider to facilitator while other stakeholders take on the roles of implementers and managers.30 Guiding the work of the new water sector is the National Water Policy (2002), which is more closely presented below. For rural areas, such as Bagamoyo District, there is also a Rural Water
Supply and Sanitation Program (2006) that stipulates how the actors involved in water supply
and sanitation are to work.31
Actors on national level
The Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MoWI) is the current name of the ministry responsible for water in Tanzania. In the decentralized water sector MoWI is only monitoring and performing quality control of the water sector activities. MoWI has five divisions, of which
Community Water Supply and Sanitation Division (from this point referred to as the
Community Water Division), is one.32 This division has an overall responsibility for water supply to rural communities. It was reconstructed from the previous Rural Water Supply
Division, to better fulfil its new role as a promoter, facilitator, regulator and coordinator of
community water projects. In this new role it shares some of its responsibilities with local government authorities, user communities and the private sector.33 Other divisions at the MoWI are the Commercial Water Supply and Sewerage Division (from this point called Commercial Water Division) – handling urban and commercial water supply issues – and the
Water Resource Management Division – that is linked to Basin Water Offices34.35
The Ministry of Health (MoH) is the national actor in the health sector. The issue of
30
Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project, March 2004: Socio-economic studies. Igunga District Council, United Republic of Tanzania, Volume 2, p. 5.
31 Interview: Engineer at Community Water Supply Division, MoWI, 11/11 and Rural Water Supply and Sanitation
Program, Tanzania, May 2006: Appraisal Report. African Development Fund, p. 3.
32 Interview: Engineer at Community Water Supply Division, MoWI, 11/11. 33
Ibid.
34 - there are 9 basins in Tanzania, each with a Basin Water Office that handles environmental water issues. 35 Interview: Engineer at Community Water Supply Division, MoWI, 11/11.
1 4 1 4 sanitation connects to both water and health issues and previously the responsibility for sanitation issues on national level has been ambiguous. Due to this, there are now initiatives to strengthen the links of cooperation between people working with sanitation. Also, since the
Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Program was adopted, public water and health actors are
supposed to work in an integrated manner.36
The National Water Policy
The 2002 National Water Policy (NAWAPO) is a policy document guiding the actors in the water sector on how to work with water resource management, water supply in rural areas and urban water supply and sewerage.37 It is the role of the MoWI, with its respective divisions, to oversee the implementation of the policy and to intervene if a project or an actor is not working in accordance with the NAWAPO.38 In the NAWAPO a new way of looking at water has emerged. Emphasis is now put on community participation and the active roles of the private sector and local government, as the role of the central government diminishes. In the 1991 national water policy the central government was seen as the sole investor, implementer and manager of projects, both rural and urban. Today community-based water supply schemes are to be planned, constructed, operated and managed together with the beneficiaries.39
In the rural water supply section of the NAWAPO the main target is to improve health and alleviate poverty through improved access to adequate and safe water. The specific objectives include:
- to provide adequate, affordable and sustainable water supply to the rural population, - to define roles and responsibilities of stakeholders,
- to emphasize on community paying for part of the capital costs, and full cost recovery for operation and maintenance of services,
- to manage water supplies at the lowest appropriate level as opposed to the centralized command control approach.
It is stated that sustainable development and delivery of rural water supplies rely on clearly defined roles and responsibilities of the various actors and stakeholder groups. It is also stated that the beneficiaries themselves should establish, own and manage their water schemes to enable a sustainable rural water supply.40
The NAWAPO was formulated in 2002, but it was not implemented until last year. This makes it difficult to evaluate how well it is working as of yet.41 According to many of our informants on district level the implementation might be problematic. Apart from this most of our informants considers the policy to be good.42
Actors on district level
At the district level there is a District Water Office (DWO), run by the District Water
36
Interview: Principal Health Officer, MoH, 8/10.
37 National Water Policy, p. 6.
38 Interview: Engineer at Community Water Supply Division, MoWI, 11/11. 39 National Water Policy, p. 5-6.
40 Ibid. p. 32. 41
Interview: Engineer at Community Water Supply Division, MoWI, 11/11.
42 Interviews: Water Supply & Civil engineering technician, DWO, 4/11; Project Manager, UKUN, 7/11 and District
1 1 Engineer. This actor is responsible for the water supply at the district level and is also directly involved in implementing water supply projects, in some cases as a contractor and in others as supervisor.43 The DWO in Bagamoyo is reporting to both the Community Water Division and the Commercial Water Division (more on this in the next part), and is also answering to the Bagamoyo’s District Executive Director who is the highest official at district level. She rules the District Office and under her sits all head of departments – including the District Water Engineer. It is up to the District Executive Director to integrate all departments in the district and make decisions on proposed projects in all areas of the public sector, including water supply.44
On district level there is also a District Health Office that in part is engaged in the water sector. They do water quality testing in areas where there has been an outbreak of a water borne disease, household inspections of how water supply and latrines are separated and inform about hygiene and good sanitation practice.45
Urban water supply in the district
Parts of Bagamoyo District lie within the area of Dar es Salaam Water Supply and Sewerage Authority46, Dawasa. Therefore water supply to 16 villages in the district is under the responsibility of an urban water authority, even though they are in rural locations. This makes the water sector in the district more complex than in most other rural areas in Tanzania.47 An example of this is that the District Water Engineer in Bagamoyo District represents Dawasa in the district, but is also representing the district authorities in Dawasa board meetings.48 Another is the above mentioned connections to both the Community and the Commercial Water Divisions at MoWI.
Dawasco (Dar es Salaam Water and Sewerage Corporation) is the company operating, managing and maintaining the water system in the Dawasa area and the work of Dawasco is monitored by Dawasa. Up until 2003 the work that Dawasco now performs was undertaken by Dawasa.49 Today, Dawasa acts as the owner of the water supply and sewerage infrastructure while Dawasco utilizes this infrastructure to provide services to their customers.50 Dawasa is the asset holder of the water system while Dawasco is the operator.51 As a result the responsibility of improving the system is divided between the two so that Dawasa is responsible for reparation and maintenance of the main transmission pipes while Dawasco is responsible for the distribution system, referring to pipes with a diameter of 20'' and less. It is also said that Dawasa is responsible for development of the system in general and in large scale, while Dawasco has the responsibility on the local level.52
43 Interview: Water Supply & Civil engineering technician, DWO, 4/11. 44
Interview: District Water Engineer, DWO, 10/11.
45 Interview: Health assistant, Bagamoyo Health Office, 19/9.
46 Kjellén, M., 2006: From public pipes to private hands: water access and distribution in Dar es Salaam,
Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, p. 10.
47 Interview: District Water Engineer, DWO, 19/9 and Kjellén, p. 10. 48 Interview: District Water Engineer, DWO, 19/9.
49 Interview: Dawasco Area Manager Bagamoyo, Dawasco, 25/9.
50 Interview: Dawasco Area Manager Bagamoyo, Dawasco, 25/9 and Kjellén, p. 84. 51
Interview: Dawasco Area Manager Bagamoyo, Dawasco, 25/9 and Dawasco’s webbsite, www.dawasco.com, 23/9 2008.
1 6 1 6
Actors on local level
In every village there is a village council, chaired by the village chairperson, with 25 representatives (called village leaders) which is making decisions on matters concerning the whole community.53 Furthermore, every village is supposed to have a water committee working with water issues in the village, and the chairperson of this committee is one of the representatives in the village council. By law, the water committees have to include women. This is because the responsibility of bringing water to households in the community in most cases lies on women and children; women should therefore also participate in the decision-making process.54 The water committee works under the DWO and are appointed by the village assembly (all adult members of the community). The day to day maintenance and operation of the water supply system is supposed to be handled by the water committee. In the event of a bigger problem, such as a bursting pipe or a pump break-down, the water committee is responsible to report this to the DWO, or – if the village lies within the Dawasa area and the incident occurs on the Dawasco system – to Dawasco.55
3.1.2 Private sector and international donors
The private sector mainly consists of non governmental organizations (NGO:s) and community based organizations. There are some private companies in the water sector in Tanzania but none has been identified working in Bagamoyo District. According to one of our informants, the small number of private companies is due to the fact that water supply is considered a service rather than a business.56 International partners to both NGO:s and the government are also represented in the water sector primarily as financial contributors in development projects.
NGO:s
There are a number of NGO:s working in Bagamoyo District, here we will only mention two who are working with water supply in our study area.
UKUN is a local NGO that is nationally registered. It is primarily working with home-based care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS. Because of the interest of the financiers the work has broadened and one of the new areas of interest is access to safe and clean drinking water for these people. Since people do not die from HIV/AIDS but rather are weakened, people living with the virus are vulnerable to water born diseases and it is a common cause of death in this group.57
Islamic Foundation is a Shia-Islamic NGO that drills shallow, covered wells with hand pumps around Bagamoyo town and in nearby villages. The Islamic Foundation is mainly operating through the mosques and the cooperation with DWO is not so good according to an informant at DWO.58
53 Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project, p. 13. 54 Interview: Principal Health Officer, MoH, 8/10.
55 Interviews: Kongo water committee, 2/11 and member of Fukayosi water committee, 4/10. 56
Interview: Doctor in Water Supply Engineering, University of Dar es Salaam, 5/11.
57 Interview: Project Manager, UKUN, 24/9.
1 1
International donors
In Tanzania plenty of international aid-organizations, donors and financial partners contribute in development projects, through the government or directly in different development projects. A few of the actors from outside the country are listed below.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation is an American organization focusing on the Millennium Development Goals and working in some of the world’s poorest countries with realizing the goals, which includes access to clean water. Tanzania is one of around 40 countries that get MCC grant assistance.59
The World Bank has numerous projects in Tanzania on Water Supply improvement. As in all their work, they do not donate, but loan money to the government. An example of a running project is a national Water Sector Development Project where enhanced coordination and cooperation is the goal. The World Bank funds a part of it, called Tanzania Water Sector Support Project.60
External governments and national aid organization working in bilateral cooperation with the Tanzanian government are numerous. Some examples working in Bagamoyo District are: Danida (Denmark) and the Japanese government. Private foreign actors are also represented in the district, funding some of the big water supply schemes.61
Figure 1: The water sector actors, relevant for this study. Public sector actors, to the left, are separated in their respective geographical levels. The actors in the semi-shaded fields are working only with water issues. The private sector actors are presented to the right and they are not as clearly representing national, district and local level. Rather, they are found on international level, and in their projects spread over all geographical levels, from national to local. The donors are directing money to both national public sector and NGO:s. There are village councils in every village, cooperating with the water committees. (Illustration by the authors.)
59 Interview: District Water Engineer, DWO, 19/9 and Millennium Challenge Coooperation website, www.mcc.gov,
4/1 2008.
60 The World Bank, www.worldbank.org, 3/1 2009.
1 8 1 8
3.1.3 Examples of project engagement
To better present the roles of the different actors in the water sector we now present a few project types:
A project can be initiated by an international donor or development organization, contacting a local or national NGO to implement. The work is then monitored by the public water organs: MoWI and the DWO. Another kind of project can be initiated from the national level, in the Commercial Water Division at MoWI. It then seems to be common to put a private consultant on the task of organizing the project, finding a contractor etcetera. Funding is often found from an international donor via the central government.62 Then there are the “preferred” rural projects63, small-scale and initiated by the local community through the creation of a water association, made up of beneficiaries, responsible for providing a project plan and partial funding (5% of the capital costs). When this is achieved it is ultimately the government’s task to find funds for the remaining part of the capital costs.64 Implementation often lies on the district level authorities.
3.2 The study area and its water supply
In this section a short presentation of Bagamoyo District will be followed by a more in-depth description of the existing water supply systems and plans for developing these. Ending this chapter is a presentation of the case study villages: Mtoni, Fukayosi and Kongo and their available water supply systems.
3.2.1 Introduction to the study area – Bagamoyo District
Bagamoyo District is one of six districts in the Pwani region that stretches over the Tanzanian coast both north and south of the biggest city, Dar es Salaam. The district makes up the northern part of the region, with the Indian Ocean to the east and Kibaha District to the south (see figure 2).65 In the 2002 census the population of the district were 228 967 with a population growth of about 2% per year.66 There are 82 villages in the district, divided into 16 wards.67
The historical Bagamoyo Town, which is the district headquarter, is located 65 kilometres north of Dar Es Salaam City and has a population of around 30 000.68 Bagamoyo was the major slave trading post in East Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries and its history has been influenced by Arab and Indian traders and the German colonial government that used Bagamoyo as the capital of Tanzania.It was first in 1919 when the British took over Tanzania that the capital was moved to Dar es Salaam.69 The name “Bagamoyo” means “lay down your heart” which commonly refers to the hopelessness experienced by slaves arriving to Bagamoyo – the last stop on the mainland before being shipped of to Zanzibar to get sold.
62 Interview: Water Supply & Civil engineering technician, DWO, 4/11. 63
- according to the NAWAPO and how the Community Water Division works.
64 Principal Health Officer, MoH, 8/10 2008.
65 National Bureau of Statistics, Tanzania, 2007: Bagamoyo District in Brief. United Republic of Tanzania, p. 3. 66 Bagamoyo District in Brief, p. i and Torell, E., Mmochi, A. and Spiering, J., 2006: Bagamoyo Governance Baseline.
Coastal Resource Center, University of Rhode Island. pp. 24, p. 4.
67
- a ward is an administrative entity made up of two or more villages.
68 Bagamoyo District in Brief, p. 3. 69 Torell, Mmochi and Spiering, p. 4.
1 1
Figure 2: Location of Tanzania in Africa, Location of Pwani Region in Tanzania and location of Bagamoyo District within the Pwani Region. Dar es Salaam lies in the small region surrounded by the Pwani Region. (Modified from www.ne.se70 & Torell, Mmochi and Spiering)
3.2.2 The physical water supply systems
In Bagamoyo District there are two big permanent rivers, Ruvu and Wami, of which Ruvu River is the main supplier of water to Dar es Salaam. Still shortage of water is a constant problem in the district. A few years ago the water supply situation was severe, but through big and small water projects it is now improving.71 At the DWO the water situation in Bagamoyo is now seen to be relatively fair, much thanks to these projects, although there are other parts of the country where the water supply is much more secured.72
There are two major projects that seem to be making a big difference in the rural water supply in Bagamoyo. The first one, where water is taken from lower Ruvu River, was completed in 1993 and contributes today with more than half of the amount of water running through Dawasa's pipes into Dar es Salaam. This is the water supply system that Dawasco manages and runs. Despite the fact that the water is taken from the Ruvu River in Bagamoyo District the original plan was only to supply Dar es Salaam with water. However, when the project was undertaken 16 villages in Bagamoyo District that lie in vicinity to the main transmission line were included. The water system does not reach all the villagers in these villages though, due to the fact that the villages are scattered and water is only distributed to signed up customers of Dawasco.73 The infrastructure of the project consists of a treatment plant and a distribution system. The treatment plant lies on the shore of the Ruvu River and there the water is pumped from the river, through mechanical and chemical treatment, chlorinated and then pumped out into the distribution system.74 The part of the project that supplies Bagamoyo District with water was designed for 30 000 people, but now 100 000 people in the district depend on it.75 This creates a water shortage and at times when Dawasco water is not available, due to rationing or technical problems, the pressure on alternative water
70 Nationalencyklopedien online, www.ne.se, 23/1 2009
71 Interview: Water Supply & Civil engineering technician, DWO, 4/11. 72 Ibid.
73 Interviews: Water Supply & Civil engineering technician, DWO, 4/11 and Dawasco Area Manager Bagamoyo,
Dawasco, 25/9.
74 Interview: Plant Manager, Lower Ruvu pump station, 22/9.
2 0 2 0 supply systems increases.76 Meanwhile the number of Dawasco customers increases every month.77
The project that is seen to have improved the water supply situation the most in the last years is called the Chalinze Water Supply Project. In this project water is taken from the Wami River. This is a completely rural water supply project set out to improve the situation in the district, but due to its size and characteristics it is carried out by the Commercial Water Division. The project is still under implementation, but the first phase was completed in 2003, giving 20 villages in the district water. In January 2009 the second phase is set to start, where an additional 38 Bagamoyo villages will get tapped water. This project is described with optimism among our informants, and is seen to have the potential to really make a difference in the district. However, it has a similar structure as the Ruvu-project; the villages are scattered and the water points will be few and probably located in the centre of the villages. As an example of this, given by a representative from the DWO: in a village consisting of eight sub-villages only one or two of these sub-villages will be supplied with water from the project. The district council and the DWO will then be facing the task of geographical expansion of the water supply system – to provide all the sub-villages with service after the whole project is completed. The Chalinze project is a national water project, run by the central government, but funding comes from an external donor. Even so, it is the government that is the decision-maker and can be seen as the client of the funding partner. Both the Dawasco run project and the Chalinze projects are commercial projects. Apart from being supervised by the Commercial Water Division, this means that the operation .and maintenance of the water supply systems are to be paid by the customers.78
In addition to these large-scale water supply systems in place and under way, there are 63 dams, 170 wells and the two big rivers supplying people in Bagamoyo with water.79 In 2004, around 30% of the people in Bagamoyo District had piped water or a protected well or spring as main source of drinking water.80 The rest then depend on less safe water supply, such as water straight from the river, dams or shallow, unprotected wells.
Plans to improve the water supply with new or improved water supply systems are present both in large-scale projects, the biggest being the Chalinze project, and in local initiatives. On the large-scale, there is a rehabilitation project under way at the lower Ruvu plant, linked to the Dawasco water supply. When this is completed the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is planning a project to expand the plant and enhance the capacity with about 50% to meet the increased demand. Together with this they will build a dam further up in the Ruvu River to control the water flow down to the (then) two intakes. This will improve the situation, but due to the population increase in Dar es Salaam the demand is already higher than the future capacity of the system will be.81
A major problem, according to our informant at Dawasco, is the large amount of unaccounted for water, amounting to 45% of the water produced. To a part this comes from people's unwillingness or inability to pay, causing them to take water without letting it be
76 Interview: Head teacher, Mwambao primary school, 26/9. 77 Interview: Dawasco Area Manager Bagamoyo, Dawasco, 25/9. 78 Interview: Water Supply & Civil engineering technician, DWO, 4/11. 79
Ibid.
80 National Bureau of Statistics, Tanzania, 2004: Regional Profile. United Republic of Tanzania. 81 Interview: Plant Manager, Lower Ruvu pump station, 22/9.
